


Monsters of the Cosmos

by Nicor_Fyrweorm



Series: Last of the Time Lords [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Time Lords (Doctor Who), Episode: s05e02 The Beast Below, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, The Master Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 17:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21305810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicor_Fyrweorm/pseuds/Nicor_Fyrweorm
Summary: Amy wanted to travel in space and time and ended in the middle of the United Kingdom. The Queen wanted to unearth the truth and learned nothing new. A little girl wanted her friend back and almost caused the destruction of her world.The Master wanted the noise in his head to stop and realized he had been right all along.Or the one where they visit Starship UK and learn a bit more about themselves than they had anticipated.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & The Master (Simm), The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who), The Master & Amy Pond (Doctor Who)
Series: Last of the Time Lords [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1511825
Comments: 2
Kudos: 61





	Monsters of the Cosmos

**Author's Note:**

> Third installment in the _Last of the Time Lords_ series, won't make sense unless you read the first two.

“We're in space. Oh my _God,_ we're really in _space!”_ Amy squeaks, shaking the Raggedy Man's shoulder, which earns her a huff equal parts amused and exasperated.

“I _did_ tell you the TARDIS was also a spaceship,” he finally tells her, and the hand he has on the back of her shirt gives her a tug. “Now, come back in so we can get at what we came for.”

“Which would be…?” she asks, turning away from the breathtaking tapestry of stars and galaxies spreading all around them as they stand at the threshold of the blue box, and the Raggedy Man's smirk turns downright mischievous.

“Now, no prying. That would run the surprise.”

When Amelia Pond was seven, there was a crack on her wall through which voices whispered at night. So, she asked for someone to fix it, and a blue box with a raggedy doctor landed on her shed. He closed the crack with a magical screwdriver, and promised to help her catch an escaped alien criminal, before he had to leave to fix his time machine. He vanished like he had never been there, leaving only a mess of dirty dishes in the kitchen and a crushed shed in the garden. Amy had grown up, convinced she had made it all up, only for the Raggedy Doctor to appear again twelve years and half a day later, convinced only five minutes had passed. They hunted down Prisoner Zero, who had been hiding in her house for all that time, with her boyfriend's, Rory's, help, and the Doctor had not only captured Prisoner Zero, but managed to scare away for good the guards that had been willing to burn the Earth down to capture it.

Then, he disappeared again, and Amy had come to the conclusion he really was the wandering hero she had made him out to be all those years ago. Only, he had popped up again two years later, on the eve of her wedding, and revealed that his time machine didn't always work as it should.

Amy had dragged him inside her house, managed to extract some answers out of him, and had been offered a one-trip deal in the time machine as compensation for all those years waiting and the four psychiatrists she had to deal with in her youth.

Only, turns out, the time machine is not _just_ a time machine.

“I still can't believe we're really in space,” she whispers with a huge smile, taking a step back so he feels finally secure in releasing her shirt.

“TARDIS, Time And Relative Dimension _In Space._ I told you twice already, pay attention,” the Raggedy Man mocks, going back to the controls, but Amy is too overjoyed to feel offended, merely rolling her eyes as she takes one last look outside, reaching for the doors—

“Uhm, Raggedy Man?” she calls, wide-eyed, as she looks down.

She may be surprised and slightly overwhelmed at the whole 'bigger on the inside time-travelling spaceship' thing, but Amy's sure she is _not_ shocked enough to hallucinate.

“Come on, Amelia, you're not even trying! What kind of name is 'Raggedy Man'?”

“Then give me one I can actually use, _Saxon,”_ she scoffs, glaring over her shoulder to see him wince down at the controls, before remembering why she called for him in the first place. “No, but listen. Is there supposed to be a city floating in space?” she asks, once more looking outside and down to make sure the vision hasn't gone away.

It hasn't. There's a city, a _huge_ city, full of skyscrapers, sitting on a meteor, just floating innocently in the middle of nowhere, with a Union Jack painted on the side.

She hears him approach, but it isn't until he's by her side once more, a cold hand grabbing her shoulder as if afraid she would fall out of the ship, that she turns to him to see him frown.

The expression immediately changes to a wide grin and a glint of satisfaction in his pale eyes.

“Aha! Found it!”

“Wait, what?”

But instead of answering, the Raggedy Man tugs her back and closes the door, hopping to the controls and forcing Amy to follow to get her answers.

He fiddles with the buttons and levers, and the TARDIS groans and wheezes, shaking for a bit, before stopping completely. _Then,_ he finally turns around, straightening and rearranging his jacket as he clears his throat.

“This is the twenty-ninth century,” he starts with his politician voice and a grin that is just the slightest bit too sharp to be Harold Saxon's winning grin. “Solar flares assault the Earth, forcing the entire human race out into the stars until the Sun stabilizes and they can return. Whole nations move onto giant starships, searching for a new home. Ladies, gentlemen, neutrals and variations thereupon, welcome to the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. Welcome to _Starship UK,”_ he announces, stepping to the door and opening it with a flourish.

Only, on the other side, instead of stars and galaxies, there's an alley opening into a bustling marketplace, surrounded on all sides by buildings so tall they vanish overhead, huge names of towns on their sides and streets named after suburbs.

Amy is wide-eyed and slack-jawed as she steps outside, turning on the spot to take everything in while the Raggedy Man locks the door behind them.

“Oh my God, I'm really in the future. I've been dead for centuries now,” she muses to herself, and startles when an arm is twined with hers.

“Bunch of laughs, you are,” the Raggedy Man snorts, tugging her along with a grin. “What do you think of Harold? Proper English name, that one. Yes, call me Harold, I feel like a Harold today,” he tells her, humming under his breath with a small frown as they walk past stalls that, despite some strange produce, aren't really that different from any other open-air market Amy has been to before.

“Yeah, sure, good one,” she answers with an eyeroll, deciding not to comment on the fact he has actually used that name before, as Saxon, in favor of the adventure they're here to experience. “So, what are we going to do here, Harold? Are we going to help them find a planet to colonize?” she asks him, excited about all the possibilities, and he gives her an almost disgusted look.

“_Help_ them? Hell, no, let them blunder. I'm not the kind of man that gets involved in the affairs of other people or planets. Not unless they benefit me, that is,” he answers with a huge grin, and Amy rolls her eyes and releases his arm when he stops to look at the produce on a stall, using the chance to observe the people instead of the place.

“So, we're like a wildlife documentary, yeah? Because if they see a wounded little cub or something, they can't just save it, they've got to keep filming and let it die. Only, you'd be the guy that skins it after,” she mocks with a teasing grin, thought she frowns as soon as the words dawn. “Okay, no, you wouldn't. You're not that kind of guy. Still, is that why you said you wouldn't help me with the crack on my wall, back when I was little? It's got to be hard. Don't you find it hard, being all detached and cold? I don't think I could do that,” she asks, turning around once more to see what kind of face he's making or what memory he's lost in this time, because it isn't like him to be this quiet.

Only, Harold isn't there anymore.

Amy startles, worried for a moment, before she catches a flash of blond hair and blue jacket as he kneels in front of a crying girl sitting in a bench. He says something, startling the little girl, before he reaches for her ear and pulls a flower out of his sleeve, as if it was a magic trick, and, in the moment he moves it from one hand to the next, he replaces it with a purple lollipop the same shade as the flower with some clever sleight of hand. The little girl blinks, surprised, but accepts the lollipop when he offers it, so he straightens and leaves her without another word.

Amy is smiling incredulously when he finally reaches her, offering his arm again with a look that dares her to make a comment, so she just chuckles and takes the offer in silence instead.

They walk some more around the market area, and, no matter how amazed Amy is at the differences and similarities she observes, she still notices his growing frown and how his sharp eyes take in every detail.

“Hey, what's with the face, Harold? Cheer up, we're in a _giant spaceship,”_ she tells him, still trying out the name, and he hushes her softly in answer.

“Don't you hear it?” he asks seriously, and, starting to frown herself, Amy _listens._

“It's a market. It sounds like a market. People, vendors, kids… Bikes. How come there are bikes on a spaceship?”

“Exactly,” he hisses, and Amy startles, looking at him with an arched eyebrow.

“The bikes?”

“The _spaceship,”_ he answers, untangling their arms and plucking a glass of water from the table they walk past, kneeling in the middle of the road and resting the glass on the floor.

“Hey! What are you doing?” the couple ask, startled, as they get to their feet, but Harold takes the glass again and hands it to the speaker with a no-nonsense expression that makes them gulp and sit down, looking away nervously.

Before Amy can ask, Harold's looped his arm around hers and tugged her away.

“What was that about?” she asks in a hush, starting to get worried, more so when he gives her what Rory calls his shark smirk.

“Amelia Pond, welcome to the police state of Starship UK,” he answers in the same soft voice as they return to the main area and sit down in an empty bench. “Don't you see it?” he asks, nodding to something further ahead—

The girl, the same one Harold showed his magic trick to, is sitting on the last bench, past a group of playing children. The lollipop is in her hands, untouched, and she's still crying quietly, looking down at it.

“One little girl crying. So?” she asks, frowning softly, and his frown darkens as he pockets his hands quite roughly, as if forcing himself to stay still.

“Crying silently. Come on, Amelia, you're not the stupidest human around. Why do brats cry?” he scoffs, and Amy scowls at him, insulted, but doesn't manage to retort before he continues with his explanation. “Attention. Tantrums, wailing, all that snotty sobbing – all of it is for attention. They want something, or they're scared or hurt. That's the way they ask for things, most basic of communication. But she's not making any noise, she's not trying to get any attention. And that? That means she _just can't stop,”_ he points out, his eyes darkening as he bows his head slightly, turning to look at the busy stalls and the people going to and fro. “Parents learn to ignore tantrums, can't give in to the brat's every whim and fancy. But this? No parent would ever ignore _this._ And yet, they do. Hundreds of parents walking past, seeing her and doing _nothing._ Because they know, they already know why she's crying, and it's something no one talks about, something no one can do anything about. Secrets, _fear._ But do you see anything wrong? No, of course not, it's a bloody marketplace, full of people going about their business, what's wrong with it? _Nothing._ Which means it's _everywhere,_ constant monitoring to keep the populace controlled, _behaving._ Police state.”

Amy gulps, looking around as casually as she can, and realizes that no, she can't spot anything wrong, other than the fact there's a child crying and no one is doing anything.

_No, that's not right._ Someone _did._

Startled at the realization, Amy turns to the man sitting at her side, the crafty alien that managed to make a whole fleet run away at just hearing his name, and who is now glaring darkly at every person that walks past the playing children and the crying girl without so much as a look at her.

_No parent would ever ignore **this.**_

He doesn't lie to children, he focuses on a little girl crying that Amy hadn't really noticed _because she's not a parent,_ and that conversation, back at her house…

_“Time Lords? Oh, that isn't pretentious at all.”_

_“Who said they weren't?”_

Put all that together, and the pain in his face whenever she mentioned Last Christmas, and Amy is not sure if she wants an answer to the question floating in her mind.

“Are you a parent?” she whispers before she can stop herself.

Harold stands up before she can see if anything changes in his face, and she follows suit, afraid he'll run away. Instead, he takes a colorful wallet out of a pocket, opens it to glance at it briefly before pressing it into Amy's hands, and turns to face her seriously.

“Deck two oh seven. Apple Sesame block, dwelling 54A. You're looking for Mandy Tanner. She dropped her wallet,” he tells her, nodding at the wallet in her hands while flicking a look at where the little girl had been sitting, and Amy's grip on the wallet tightens as she realizes what it actually is. “Ask her about the smiling puppets in the booths.”

Amy frowns at those last instructions, but follows his gaze obediently.

There are some kind of robots in booths all around the marketplace, like creepy mockeries of ticket stalls in a cinema or a fair.

“Why?” she asks carefully, cradling the wallet closer, and Harold gives her a brief proud grin.

“Look at this place, all old and dirty and _used._ But the booths are pristine, and the floor within two feet of them is as clean as the day it was installed. Police state, remember?”

“Something is observing, and it's everywhere,” Amy repeats, realization dawning, and, when he nods, she nods back, determined, and pockets the wallet. “What are you going to do?”

“Don't know yet. Meet me back here in half an hour,” Harold answers with a nonchalant tone and shrug, pocketing his hands and walking back into the market while whistling an unknown tune.

Amy watches him for a moment longer, the hand in her pocket tightening around the wallet she's mostly sure he _stole,_ and can't help but smile softly at his retreating back.

“So, that's how it works, isn't it? No interfering unless you can get something out of it… or there are children crying,” she whispers under her breath, remembering just how scared she'd been when it had looked like he would simply walk away after examining the crack on her wall, and how he'd only promised to help her once she'd started tearing up. “The Big Bad Doctor, all prickly on the outside but a big softy on the inside,” she chuckles, pushing it out of her mind as she moves to the lifts.

Amy has a girl to find.

* * *

If anyone had told Koschei—_Harold,_ though he's not really sure about the name, it fits the situation but doesn't fit _him—_he would be skulking around in the engine rooms of a nation-spaceship in the twenty-ninth century to try and unmask the secrets of a police state, he would have laughed in their faces. Loudly. For a really long time. And, when he was done, he would have aimed his shiny new sonic screwdriver with a tiny laser function at their heads and told them he was _not_ the Doctor.

He isn't the Doctor, but that doesn't mean he is not skulking around in the engine rooms of a nation-spaceship in the twenty-ninth century to try and unmask the secrets of a police state. Harold's not doing it out of the goodness of his hearts, or some kind of misplaced sense of duty, or whatever. He's doing it, as usual, because of the noise in his head.

Only, this time, it isn't the drums, it will never be the drums again. It's the _screams._

Something is screaming, wailing in pain and moaning in agony, loudly and unceasingly, just high enough in the register that all the stupid humans in the ship can't hear it. He can't exactly _fault_ them for their inferior biology, but he'll be damned if he can't smack them in the head a couple—or ten—times for how _blind_ they are purposefully being.

As he uses his new screwdriver, the one the TARDIS made for him when repairing herself, to scan the walls and the power boxes all over them, he _feels_ his scowl darkening.

A ship this big, with so many millions of ears and feet on it, and _no one_ notices? _Really?!_

Harold's no Doctor, but he'll be damned if he doesn't look into this. He _knows_ better than anyone, except for a handful of people aboard a certain flying ship on a certain date, just what kind of monsters the human race can be.

Besides, Theta the Ghost will drive him insane with his pacing if he doesn't at least _try_ and see what is going on here.

“It can't be, it just _can't._ What is it saying? What are the readings showing?” Theta asks, trying to see over Harold's shoulder as he scowls at his yellow-lighted screwdriver.

“The impossible truth in a glass of water,” a voice speaks up from down the corridor, and Harold _feels_ Theta pop away so he can deal with whoever sneaked up on him unbothered. “Not many people see it. But you do, don't you, Doctor?”

“It's Harold,” he tells her, holding his screwdriver by his side non-threateningly, but already thumbing for the scrambling setting, putting it at 'human' just in case the flesh under her mask is actually what it looks like instead of part of the disguise.

Worst case scenario, he'll have to turn it up if the woman under the red velvet cape reveals herself a machine, but that won't take that long. He would be preparing the laser function instead, but the TARDIS didn't think to give him a _proper_ laser screwdriver, and so that function is restricted to cutting and soldering whatever the sonic functions can't deal with. He could've modified it into a proper laser screwdriver, of course, but he'd been busy with Amelia, the TARDIS holding back on her 'present' until the girl had been onboard.

Bah, he'll do that later.

“As you please, _Harold._ Now keep your voice down. They're everywhere,” she concedes with a nod, obviously just humoring him. “Tell me what you saw in the glass.”

“Oh, aren't you full of yourself,” he scoffs, lifting his chin to give her a mocking grin. “What makes you think I'll do anything you tell me, _your majesty?”_ he mocks, but doesn't miss how she tenses at his words.

… Nah. Can't be. Can it?

“Don't waste time. At the marketplace, you placed a glass of water on the floor, looked at it, then came straight here to the engine room. Why?”

“Why don't _you_ tell me, Queenie?” he asks instead, observing her closely.

Her shoulders hitch as she clamps down on a startled breath, and Harold frowns. Oh, he's definitely onto something here.

Her head twists the tiniest bit, as if looking around, and so he decides to poke some more, see if he can get more answers to this now far more complicated puzzle.

“Engine vibration. That's what I _didn't_ see. With a ship this big, there's no way it would go unnoticed. Trembling under your feet, water moving in the glass… People get used to it, sure, but they also get used to breathing and that doesn't mean they _don't do it_ anymore,” he answers, sonicking the box by his side and not even bothering to turn to it as he notices the insides from the corner of his eye. “Nothing. No couplings, no engines—” he adds, reaching to tap the wall loudly to make his point but stopping when he remembers her saying _they're everywhere._ “So, how is this ship _moving?”_

She lets out a breath, shoulders slumping, when he drops his hand, the gesture almost unnoticeable, before she collects herself.

“The impossible truth, Harold. We're travelling among the stars in a spaceship that could never fly.”

“How.”

“I don't know,” she answers sincerely, shoulders tensing as she tilts her head down slightly. “There's a darkness at the heart of this nation. It threatens every one of us. Help us, Doctor. You're our only hope.”

Harold scowls, ready to tell her again that he is _not_ the Doctor, but freezes at her next words.

“Your friend is safe. This will take you to her. Now go, quickly!” she tells him, handing him a tracking device – and Harold grabs her wrist instead, immediately catching the other when she makes to grab at something, and slams her into the wall for good measure.

“What have you done to Amelia,” he hisses, glaring into the wide eyes behind the eye slits. “Answer or say goodbye to your right wrist, _your Majesty.”_

“Koschei, Rule Two!” Theta barks at his back and, as if zapped, Harold releases the masked woman and backpedals until his back hits the opposite wall.

She startles, rubbing her wrists with her whole body primed to attack, but Harold doesn't care about her anymore, rubbing his face almost violently.

“You can't just hurt people like that. She said Amy was safe, she gave you the means to track her…”

“It's a trap. It's a bloody trap!” he hisses, looking up to see a worried Theta—

The woman is gone.

The light flickers some more, but she's gone, no sign of her other than the tracker on the ground.

“Koschei…”

“Shut up,” Harold spits, picking up the device and looking it over for any tricks. “I'm not losing her. I'm not losing anyone else ever again.”

“… For the record, you _are_ allowed to shout at them and threaten them. Just, don't get physical. It's…”

“Hard to stop once you've started, I know,” Harold sighs when Theta falls silent, giving the ghost a shadow of a smirk. “And I'll take you up on that. Wouldn't want to end up all dirty, anyway,” he huffs, following the tracker, and listens absentmindedly as Theta chuckles and starts babbling, muting the screams with his inane chat.

Finding Amelia is easy with the tracker, but also because there's a known girl sitting on a bench outside of where the device points him to. Theta falls silent, hanging back so as to not disturb, as Harold approaches her—

The door slides open and Harold doesn't think twice, changing his route towards the now accessible room.

Amelia is inside, leaning over a tiny console with four small screens, and with her eyes red and her cheeks wet.

“Listen to me. This isn't a trick. This is real,” Amelia's voice is saying through the speakers, but Harold focuses on the girl instead, on how she's staring at him at a complete loss, waiting for rescue. “You've got to find Harold.”

“What happened?” he asks stepping inside, and Amelia immediately slams a button that makes the screens go black for a moment, before the Starship UK logos flash in them. “What did you do?”

“I don't know,” she answers, looking away for a moment before meeting his eyes with confusion. “I chose to forget.”

He spends the next minutes scanning the screens and the console and even the lamp on the ceiling, while Amelia tells him what happened since they separated, shifting in her spot and trying to put things together.

“You'll be alright. It's just a basic memory wipe, erases about twenty minutes,” Harold tells her calmly as he hops off the chair, and Amelia stops biting her nails to look up at him.

“But why would I choose to forget?” she asks him as if he had all the answers, and he can't help but frown as he juggles all the pieces of this bizarre puzzle.

“Because everyone does. Everyone chooses the Forget button,” the little girl standing just outside the door, Mandy, tells them, clutching her bag strap.

“Did you?” Harold asks, frown darkening, because, as harmless as such a wipe is, it still shouldn't be used on such undeveloped minds as those of children.

“I'm not eligible to vote yet. I'm twelve,” she explains, and Harold relaxes a bit as he listens to yet another piece of the puzzle. “Any time after you're sixteen, you're allowed to see the film and make your choice. And then once every five years.”

A ship that flies even though it wasn't built for it. A truth made of secrets displayed in broad daylight, held in a net of fear woven by the same puppet in the booth inside this 'voting room'. A higher-up investigating her own people, searching for answers she _should_ have. And the screams, the pained screams assaulting his ears to the point he's sure he'll be able to hear them even long after they're gone.

“Just what have you done this time?” he asks the screens, barely above a whisper, as he switches settings on the screwdriver and tries to trigger a response.

He _needs_ to know what is going on here, what in Skaro these _humans_ have done.

“How do you not know about this? Are you Scottish too?” little Mandy asks him, curious, and Harold snorts as he shifts around, looking for a panel he could pry off instead.

“And again with the same thing. Do I look human to you?” he huffs, shining his screwdriver behind the screens to see why they won't move.

“… Yes. Aren't you human? Scottish people are human too, you know.”

“Oh, wow, thanks for that,” Amelia harrumphs, puffing up like a bird with its feathers ruffled, and Harold can't help but laugh at that, pulling away from the console.

“Good one! But I'm actually a Time Lord. And, technically, _I_ don't look human, _you_ look Time Lord. We came first,” he tells little Mandy with a huge smirk, which earns him a confused and curious frown.

“What's a Time Lord? Is it like a Captain or a Major? Are there more Time Lords around?”

Harold's smile freezes and, slowly, breaks, leaving him blank. Theta, standing next to Mandy, deflates, sadness and pain and _guilt_ in his eyes, before giving him an encouraging nod.

It's over. It has been long since over. But to Harold and the ghost, it was only two days, nineteen hours, eleven minutes and forty-six seconds since they sent Gallifrey back into the Time War to be destroyed.

All those screams, all the fear and pain he heard when the time lock broke… All of that makes him realize that, while the current screams are louder, they are almost negligible in comparison.

What is one screaming voice, no matter how loud, when compared to a whole planet and a lifetime of memories associated with it and those on it?

“There aren't. I'm the last one left,” he tells Mandy with a small sad smile that slips off his face almost as soon as it appears, before turning back to the screens and letting his grief and loss fuel his determination. “But I won't forget, no matter how much I want to. I failed once, but not anymore. I won't let the monsters win anymore,” he hisses, looking down at the buttons before turning to a teary-eyed Amelia. “This is your chance to get out of here. Stay with Mandy, keep her company. Whatever happens now, you don't have to be part of it.”

Amelia sniffs, wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her red sweater, and glares at him.

“Like Hell I don't, Raggedy Man. I chose to forget once. I'm not doing it again,” she answers, lifting a hand so it hovers over the Protest button.

Harold gives her a wide proud smirk before turning to Mandy, who steps away from the door with her eyes wide, and Theta, who looks about as excited as usual.

“Alright then. Let's bring down the government!” he shouts, resting his hand on Amelia's, and, together, they press the Protest button.

The door shuts with a snap, trapping them inside, and the puppet in the booth rotates its head so that it's scowling at them instead of smiling, red eyes and pointy teeth included.

“Aw, isn't that cute,” Harold coos with wide eyes and an innocent face, before letting a grin twist his features. “Do your _worst.”_

And the floor vanishes under their feet.

Travel through high speed air cannon is never nice, but what they land on, or rather _in,_ is even worse.

Being covered in organic refuse is still better than the way the screams are suddenly louder, drowning Harold's very thoughts and reverberating inside his skull—

But they have nothing on the drums.

So, with a grimace and a shake of his head to get rid of the ringing, he gets to his feet and gives a disgusted Amelia a hand.

“Well, now we know why no one ever protests. Those that do end up six hundred feet down and twenty miles laterally, right at the heart of the ship. Or, rather, waste disposal,” he informs her happily, shining the screwdriver around to try and see something.

“Ugh, it's _disgusting!_ And the smell, urgh. What is this place, anyway? The floor is all squidgy, like a water bed,” Amelia asks, shifting around carefully as she tries to wipe her face clean, and Harold frowns—

And closes his eyes, taking in a deep sniff.

It does, indeed, smell disgusting, rotting organic refuse and some kind of acidic aftertaste under it. The air is stale, especially further away from the tubes they dropped from. And the sound, the screaming, so much louder now that they are so further down, coming from one end of the waste disposal and bouncing off the other—

Oh.

Harold snaps his eyes open, tense, and finds Amelia staring up at him expectantly.

“Well? How bad is it?” she asks, brows furrowing in worry, and Harold looks around once more, getting his bearings, before swallowing and grimacing.

“Quite. It's a tongue,” he answers, and Amelia's expectation turns to confusion. “The floor. That's why it's so rubbery. It's not a floor, it's a tongue.”

“You're kidding. You _have_ to be kidding – We're in a _mouth?_ What kind of beast can be this _huge?_ And why would it be _here?!_ We're still in the spaceship, aren't we?” she questions hurriedly, gesticulating, while Harold grabs his screwdriver and checks their surroundings.

“Yes, this is still within the boundaries of the spaceship, which means – oh, _shit._ Too late,” he cuts himself, fiddling more frantically with his screwdriver before pushing it into Amelia's hands so he can take off his jacket. “Hold that for me – Okay, here, let's switch. I want you to cover your head and face with the jacket and, when I say, hold your breath, understood?”

“What? Why? What's going on now?” she asks, her nervousness increasing, but obediently swaps the screwdriver for the jacket and puts the clean inside over her head. “And what about you?”

“I can hold my breath much longer,” he answers with a shudder and a grimace, immediately pocketing the screwdriver when the whole 'room' shudders. “See, it was about to swallow, so I had to activate the emergency exit.”

“Since when do mouths have emergency exits?” Amelia asks, face scrunched, and squeaks when Harold pulls her against his chest, looking down the 'corridor' through which he can start to hear gurgling.

“Ever had something tickle the back of your throat?”

Amelia is silent for a while, but the way she shudders as she realizes the meaning of his words is enough of an answer. Harold can see it now, anyway, the wave approaching them, so he tugs the jacket closed around Amelia, wraps his arms around it so it will hopefully stay airtight as he curls around her, and closes his eyes while praying to the Eternals that the beast won't just open its mouth.

The wave hits like a train, throwing them around like leaves in a storm, and Harold can only wrap himself tighter around Amelia and try not to let out the pained shout at the burning all over his back and legs from the initial impact. They whirl around some more, with Harold tugging on as many coincidences as he can to get them in the right currents, towards the center of what feels like a large tube – and the present snaps in place and they're pushed up and up and _out._

Fortunately, they just slide for a bit before stopping, instead of slamming into something. The floor is grating, to allow the saliva and digestive juices to go back down the tube, but it's still infinitely better than slamming into a wall. Harold releases Amelia, letting her jerk off his chest with a terrified and only slightly breathless gasp, while he shakes his head and rubs off as much of the sick as possible before he dares take in a breath.

“Ugh, this _stinks,”_ he groans, rubbing his eyes as clean as he can before opening them, and grimacing in disgust and a tinge of pain.

Nothing broken, no concussion, but he'll definitely be sore for a while.

“Are we seriously covered in _sick?!”_ Amelia shrieks, gagging, and Harold can't help but snicker, finally getting to his feet when she stands up to clean herself as much as possible with equally dirtied hands.

“Would you have preferred being eaten? At least you can fix _this_ with a shower. Or three.”

“No, no shower. I want a big bubble bath after this, you hear me?” she protests, pointing a finger menacingly, and Harold sighs at the thought.

“You and me both. I know a place, you'll like it. Best leisure palace of the forty-eighth century, great ratings. It lasts only for a couple hundred years, something about the x-tonic radiation being too much, but that's the good thing about owning a time – ah, of course,” he explains, cutting himself as soon as he sees the two booths against a wall, each with a smiling puppet in it.

“Harold, there's a door there. But to go out, we have to push the Forget button,” Amelia tells him from further away, but Harold takes out his screwdriver, gives it a couple flicks to make sure it's clean and functional, and faces the puppets once more with a scowl.

“What a surprise. _Not._ Now, are you going to explain what was _that_ down there? We're going to forget anyway, so where's the risk?” he asks the puppets nonchalantly, but they just remain immobile, smiles painted on their faces. “Alright. One chance. Tell us, or I go looking for answers _my way,”_ he adds, serious, and the puppets' faces twist to reveal frowns. “Oho, you don't like that, do you? That means there's something juicy at the end, and that I _can_ find it. Aw, don't scowl or your faces will get stuck like that,” he tells the now snarling puppets, pouting sadly, before breaking into a grin. “Come on! Where's the _fun_ in this place? Someone sniffs around and you throw them into the mouth of the beast? Yeah, why not! But what do you do to the ones that escape? Where are the soldiers, the torture – or, wait, do you jump straight to execution?” he asks, perking up, before twisting to give a wide-eyed and disturbed Amelia a huge toothy grin over his shoulder. “I _love_ a good execution. Don't think Dark Ages though, too messy and unrefined. Nah, quick zap with a TCE, and the body shrinks to oblivion! Nasty sort of death, that one, and not fun at all. You can leave the body doll-sized, instead, it's a classic. Or use the laser. Not as freaky, but it has its uses too.”

The booths open with a squeak, and the puppets step out. Harold thumbs his screwdriver to the sonic screech, hopping on his toes like a boxer.

“There we go! Took you long enough. I thought you didn't have it in you, honestly. Alright, _brrrring_ it on!”

The robots step closer, Harold lifts his screwdriver – and with a screech, the creatures shudder, stumble, and fall on their faces, twitching.

Harold stills, looks down at them for a moment, and cracks his neck with a huff.

“Well, that was disappointing. Here I was hoping for a fight.”

“Are you serious?!” Amelia shrieks at his back, and, grimacing, he casually turns around and switches the settings to scan.

He's getting better at this, learning this TARDIS-made screwdriver. There are some additional settings he's not sure about, probably more oriented to Field Technological Repair and Assembly, likely some for Xenotechnology too—Theta was always better at that, craftier and curiouser—but Harold's finally getting the hang of the everyday ones. Well, what passes as everyday for a Time Lord stumbling around the universe, that is.

“Oh, come on. Tell me you didn't want to sock them for the whole trying to get you eaten thing,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes at Amelia, who crosses her arms against her chest disapprovingly.

“And all that about executions?”

“What? Never tried to unnerve your enemy? The faces are the best part,” Harold answers with a big grin, deciding to omit how sincere he'd been when saying _that._

Humans, as far as he's learnt, are really iffy about all that execution thing and the icky bits of any battle, especially those from the nineteenth to twenty-second centuries, after they leave most of the animal behind but before they actually grow into their space-faring greedy selves. After that, they tend to be just as morally stick-up-the-ass, but more capable of making things not look as messy and, consequently, not as wrong, even if they still are.

Enslaving the whole Ood species, for example, before the Friends of the Ood helped them rebel in the forty-second century. And Io's 'accidental' genocide after the introduction of some kind of virus – and never mind the fact human and Ionian genetic code wasn't compatible and thus the virus couldn't have affected the Ionian fauna. They passed the Ood as a naturally evolved servant race, impossible as such a thing is, and forgot all about any kind of life there could have been on Io after a measly decade, taking all the nice minerals and metals they could find. And many more examples like those.

“So, it was all made up? The TCE thing, and the lasers?”

“Of course not,” he answers with a scoff, scanning the twitching puppets. “TCE stands for Tissue Compression Eliminator, but it's actually just a compressor. The Trzaki invented it to help them deal with almost everything, from waste disposal to building and transport. Obviously, the original compressors also had a decompressing option, but when the Rutans invaded the Trzaki home world, they only cared about the compressor option to use it in their scouting missions, so they could dispose of the bodies they shapeshifted into. The Sontarans, of course, followed after the Rutans, and the Trzaki were caught between the two sides and obliterated. I was getting some parts for the TARDIS and ended up in the middle of the mess,” he adds, straightening and analyzing the results of the scan about the structure of the puppets, trying to figure out if they are really repairing themselves or are tougher than they appear. “I managed to stow away into one of the Rutan ships to get the tech I needed, and found they'd been playing around with the compressors. Death by compression is horrible, and the victim screams a lot, so, to stay undetected, the Rutans modified the compressors so that they channeled their own bioelectricity. Like that, they would fry the brain just as the process started, keeping the victim still and quiet. Swift, painless and clean. Of course, as soon as I got what I needed, I erased all their data on the compressors and blew up the ship. No more compression technology or TCEs,” he finishes with a grimace after a second scan, because the puppets _are_ repairing themselves.

What he doesn't say, of course, is that he _had_ taken one of the Rutan-modified TCEs before blowing them up. No need to waste a perfectly good weapon, after all. It hadn't been too hard to adapt it to use a Rutan power cell instead of bioelectricity, either, and so it had remained one of his most useful and preferred tools over the centuries. Shame it was destroyed by the Daleks, but oh well. Regardless of its usefulness, it wouldn't have proven as useful as the laser screwdriver had been during the Time War. Which was why, when he found himself stranded on Earth after stealing the TARDIS at the end of the universe, he decided to recreate the laser screwdriver instead of the TCE, using what parts he could from the TARDIS and supplying the rest from human-made materials.

That, and the fact he really didn't know if he would have been capable of creating an actual TCE after the loss of the Trzaki. But no one needed to know _that._

“Wow. Someday you have to tell me those stories,” Amelia whispers, awed and cheerful once more, and Harold snorts.

“Oh, I don't know. There's a lot of death, gore, planet conquest, genocide and evil cackling involved – on my part, of course, I'm the best evil cackler in the known universe, and part-time world conqueror,” he answers with a wide grin, finally pulling away from the puppets after delivering another scrambling sonic burst.

He could probably just dismantle them, but there are better uses of his time than playing with drones. Harold is not _that_ curious about inferior human craftmanship, not at this stage of their evolution. The clockwork droids from the fifty-first century, on the other hand… They might be crude, but no one can deny their beauty and ability to unnerve with their constant ticking noise.

“Sometimes I don't know if you're serious or just have a really disturbing sense of humor,” Amelia groans, pulling her messy hair into a bun, and disregarding his previous words.

So, Harold shrugs and makes for the door, intent on scanning it to figure a way out – but it opens of its own volition before he can.

On the threshold, mask off, is the woman from before, down in the engines. She looks startled, eyes moving quickly to the twitching puppets on the floor before returning to him.

“Hello again, your Majesty,” he purrs with a sharp grin, aware of Amelia stepping up to them and clutching his screwdriver tighter.

“It won't take them long to repair. Let's move,” the woman tells them, stepping back into the corridor, and, this time, Harold follows with just a huff and a muttered _I know that._

“Did you just call her 'your Majesty'? Who is she?” Amelia asks, wide-eyed, as she leaves the room.

“You're alright!” Mandy squeaks excitedly but quietly, perking up before stepping away with a disgusted grimace. “And you _stink.”_

“Ugh, honey, don't even start,” Amelia moans, earning a chuckle from the woman.

“So, you tracked the tracker, huh?” Harold asks, though it's not really a question, and the woman meets his eyes over her shoulder with a nod as she guides them away. “Who else can do that?”

“Just me and my people, but they won't without my word.”

“Your people? Does that really mean you're really the Queen? Or, uh, is there a queen still?” Amelia asks, surprise turning to discomfort, but their guide gives her an approving grin to calm her down.

“Yes, I am. Liz Ten, Elizabeth the Tenth. You must be Amy, Mandy has been telling me about you,” she comments, finally confirming Harold's suspicions.

“Oh, it-it's an honor, your Majesty!” Amelia stammers before grabbing Harold's arm with a hiss. “She's the bloody Queen and we're covered in sick! You could've warned me! How do you even know the Queen anyway?”

“He's hard to miss, love,” Liz answers instead while Harold shakes his arm out of Amelia's grip, catching their attention. “Mysterious stranger, M.O. consistent with higher alien intelligence, hardly ever makes sense.”

“Oi!”

“She's not wrong, you know.”

“Anyway, I've been brought up on the stories. The whole family was,” Liz continues as if they hadn't spoken, and both Harold and Amelia perk up, curious as to what kind of 'stories' she must be referring to. “The Doctor. Old drinking buddy of Henry Twelve. Tea and scones with Liz Two. Vicky was a bit on the fence about you, wasn't she? Knighted and exiled you on the same day. And so much for the Virgin Queen, you bad, bad boy,” she tells them nonchalantly, delivering a knowing grin, eyebrow waggle included, with the last name.

Harold – _Koschei_ chokes on his own breath, the protest at being called the Doctor _again_ tangling up with the horrified _what_ that tries to come up at the same time.

“Oh my God, seriously?!” Amelia laughs, barely managing to cover her lower face with her hands, and Koschei looks between her and the grinning Liz with wide eyes.

“Wha—No—I-I—”

He looks at Theta, searching for some kind of explanation as to _what in Omega's holy hands are they talking about, I thought you didn't like humans **that** way,_ but the ghost quickly throws his hands up.

“I'm just an echo, I don't know anything!” he hurries to say, looking as startled and disturbed as Koschei himself.

And, well, with _good reason._ Humans might look Time Lord, but they are most definitely _not._ And human reproduction – _Urgh, my eyes!_

No, no way in Skaro's radioactive flames would any self-respecting Time Lord, renegade or not, exiled to Earth or not, _ever_ consider a _human_ that way. _Ever._ Not even the Master did when he married Lucy as Harry Saxon, no matter how much she tried to come unto him. _Ew._

“Are you talking about sex? We covered it in class last week,” Mandy asks innocently enough.

Amelia stops cackling, going red as she remembers the girl is there, while Liz chuckles and faces forward once more, leading them through a door.

As soon as Amelia turns away, Mandy gives Koschei a mischievous grin and a wink, which he returns with a pleasantly surprised half-smirk.

_Clever girl._

But still, the fact the question hasn't been answered doesn't mean it wasn't asked. So, Koschei can't help but wince as he realizes what _that_ means.

“I don't want to hear any more 'stories',” Koschei groans, rubbing his eyes as he feels exhaustion weighting on his shoulders.

How long has it been since he last rested? … Huh, actually, he hasn't in this body, not since his resurrection. He'd just been so… busy. The forced nap from when Naismith 'kidnapped' him at the wasteland doesn't count, having to fight off sedatives is the opposite of resting.

“It'll be over soon,” Theta whispers before popping off, and, with a sigh, Koschei rests a hand on the Memory Ring hidden under his shirt, hanging from a chain of Gallifreyan zinc he'd found in the wardrobe.

One of the strongest metals in the universe, and quite rare even before – well. Anyway, strong enough that there's no way it could break by accident, and that's all that matters. It also helps that it's vaguely magnetized to a Gallifreyan's bioelectrical signature and won't slip off. He wouldn't be carrying the ring around otherwise.

The ring. The thrice-damned stupid ring.

Fortunately, the next corridor is bizarre enough to take his mind off it, what with the tentacle-stinger things beating against the grating on the wall—

Oh. _Oh._

Liz and Mandy walk ahead, talking about an elevator, but Koschei stops in front of the grate, eyes wide and breath caught in his throat.

“I saw one of these up top. There was a hole in the road, like it had burst through like a root. What are they, Harold? An infestation?” Amelia asks, squeezing his hand, and Koschei immediately rips it out of her grip before she can feel it shaking.

“Oh, I couldn't have put it better myself,” he growls, striding after the two natives, with Amelia hurrying to catch up. “And don't call me that anymore. Anything but _Harold._ The British Royal family and I are going to have _words,”_ he hisses, catching Amelia's startled nod just before they enter the elevator.

Koschei tries really hard not to look at Liz Ten, hanging onto his temper masterfully – _hah!_ – thanks to the absence of the drums spurring him on, but knowing himself enough that he's sure he won't be able to contain himself if their eyes meet.

Humans may be unable to communicate with their eyes alone, but they are still expressive enough that Koschei _will_ try to _extract_ information if he looks at her.

Rule Number Two says no hurting people, and he's pretty sure the shock of being hypnotized would count as hurting. So, for now, Koschei will be patient and get his answers another way.

And if they don't satisfy him…

Well, unlike others, _Koschei_ will at least give humanity the chance to _beg._

* * *

_Don't let him investigate,_ recording Amy had said, _stop him. Do whatever you have to, just please, please get Harold – get the Doctor off this ship._

Amy doesn't know what the Hell happened in the voting chamber, what the video was about, but…

_“You are here because you want to know the truth about this starship, and I am talking to you because you're entitled to know,”_ the man in the recording had said, calm yet so sad, before explaining about the buttons. _“Here then, is the truth about Starship UK, and the price that has been paid for the safety of the British people. May God have mercy on our souls,”_ he'd finished with, and whatever had come after it, Amy had, for some reason, chosen to forget it, but not before recording a message for her amnesiac self.

_“Get the Doctor off this ship.”_

But why would Amy forget? It would be a lot easier to get out of here if they knew what's going on, if _Amy_ knew what's happening. There's no fixing anything if you don't know what the problem is, she knows, but she had still chosen to forget. What could be so bad, so horrible, that not only would she wish to get the Doctor away before he could figure out what was going on and how to fix it, but also that she would rather forget all about it?

_“But I won't forget, no matter how much I want to. I failed once, but not anymore. I won't let the monsters win anymore,”_ he had said after revealing he really was the last of his species, and Amy had felt her heart break for him.

Last Christmas, two days ago – they are both the same, something so horrible that the Doctor won't talk about, won't even think about without looking desolate and-and _alone._

The loneliest being in the universe, never interfering, hiding behind the prickly shell of a crazy man—though the crazy is starting to look less and less like a shell and more like a result of whatever he's lived through—yet unable to walk away from crying children.

He may be as much of an opportunist as he claims to be, might be as crazy as he appears, might not even be a good person – Prisoner Zero, all alien and twisted in pain, gaping blindly after whatever the Doctor had done to get it out of her head, and the way the Atraxi had run away as if the Devil itself was on their tail – but he's still _the Doctor._ He helps people, even if his methods aren't exactly orthodox, regardless of his reasons for doing so.

Never killing, never cruel, always giving people a chance, never letting bystanders get hurt in the crossfire. Those are his rules, straight out of his mouth, but he is _not_ harmless. Doctor Rule Number Four. If the bad guy doesn't take the offered chance, off with the kiddie gloves. Prisoner Zero didn't take it. The Atraxi couldn't have taken it faster.

And when Amy discovered the truth about Starship UK, she chose to forget and beg her future self to get the Doctor off the ship. Suddenly, she's not sure whether it's for the Doctor's sake or the Starship's.

One way or another, it is too late now.

The Doctor has shed his fake name, he's completely silent and serious, deadly focused, and hasn't looked anyone in the eye since he figured something out, staring at the tentacle-stingers behind the grate in the corridor.

The bedroom they enter next has a corner covered in water glasses. The Doctor gives them a brief glance but doesn't react, analyzing everything else with the same intensity. Amy suspects he's still putting things together, even if he's already figured out the big secret, holding back judgement until he knows exactly what is going on. She's not sure what he'll do _after,_ though, so she decides she'd better get some information of her own as well. He won't talk, not until he knows exactly _how_ to deliver the most devastating blow he can, like he did with the Atraxi, forcing them to realize just how much they had messed up.

_Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime._

Or, in this case, _strike so hard as to ensure you don't have to strike twice._ That he does it with his words instead of his fists, or whatever he used on Prisoner Zero, only makes it _worse._

“What are all those glasses for?” Mandy asks, a bit nervous around the Queen but confident enough to ask questions, and Amy has to smile at her.

“To remind me every single day that my government is up to something, and it's my duty to find out what,” Liz answers with her own smile, steel in her eyes.

Well, at least someone is doing something about this crazy situation.

“How come you don't know what's going on? I mean, you're _the Queen._ Did you choose the Forget button as well?” Amy asks instead, keeping an eye on the Doctor, who is frowning at a wall.

“I'm not technically a British subject, so I don't vote,” she answers with a shrug. “And yes, I should know, but they still manage to keep secrets from me. That's why I have to go undercover in my own kingdom,” she adds with a humorless smile, lifting her mask.

“How old are you?”

As one, the three girls turn to the Doctor, still staring at the wall with a frown, avoiding their eyes.

“Fifty. I was forty when I came to the throne, been investigating since. And you have managed more in one afternoon that I have in these ten years,” Liz answers, huffing in amusement, with amazement in her eyes.

“No way are you fifty now. Wait, unless, is this normal?” Amy blurts out, looking between the immutable Doctor, still looking at the wall, and the grinning Liz.

“They slowed my body clock. It keeps me looking like the stamps,” she jokes, and, for one moment, Amy is not sure whether she's more amazed at the fact they can do that in the future or that there are still stamps around.

Something moves behind her before Amy can make up her mind about her next question, and, when she turns around, she sees the Doctor has finally turned to face them. He's glaring at the mask in Liz's hands now, and his eyes are _really_ dark under his frown, almost black.

“And you always wear that. Air-balanced porcelain, stays on by itself because it's perfectly sculpted to your face,” he comments blankly, though there's a hint of the same darkness in his gaze in his voice, a rasp that is more of a growl building up.

“So what?” Liz asks, almost defensively, as her grip on the mask tightens, and the Doctor takes a long and deliberate breath before meeting her eyes.

He doesn't answer, doesn't say anything, but Amy can see Liz's wariness building.

And then, some cloaked guys enter the room and surround them.

Liz orders them to explain themselves, their heads twist to reveal themselves to be half-Smilers, and then they tell the Queen that they must go with them to the Tower, _on orders of the highest authority._

The Queen is the highest authority in Starship UK. Amy's stomach drops, but she follows alongside the rest, stepping closer to the still silent Doctor.

In spite of the name being 'the Tower', they are taken to the lowest level instead.

The room is big, full of machinery and some raised grates on the ground, keeping at bay tentacle-stingers, while there's a waist-high round wall in the middle of the room with what looks like giant electrodes hanging from the ceiling over it.

An old, tall and thin man with round glasses steps up to them, wearing the same black and gray robes of the half-Smilers, but without a Smiler scowl stitched to the back of his head.

“Hawthorne. So, this is where you hid yourself away. You've got some explaining to do,” the Queen tells him after he reveals himself, almost getting in his face as she does so.

The Doctor strolls past them unbothered, hands deep in his pockets and gaze lost in the ceiling, until he reaches the wall in the middle and lets his head loll so he's staring into it – and snorts.

Loudly.

All eyes turn to him, and Amy feels hers widening when she sees his shoulders shake. Just what is inside that well? Is it what recording Amy warned her about? What if it's more of those stingers? She should go pull him back before—

The Doctor throws his head back and laughs.

Loud, boisterous, _amused,_ as if he's just been told the joke of the century.

Amy thinks back to Prisoner Zero, to the two Smilers in the reflux chamber, and pulls Mandy behind her, fearing the worst—

The Doctor whirls around, arms spread wide like a ringmaster gesturing at the next circus act, and a grin wider and more terrifying than the Smilers' fanged scowls.

“The human race, ladies and gentlemen! The greatest monsters in the universe!” he laughs, still sincere in his mirth, and that is the most horrifying thing of all.

He's snapped, Amy can see that clear as day. The Doctor has snapped, his craziness being as real as she feared, and here he is now, having found the last piece of the puzzle. His grin says it even if his words did not, a loud and blatant _I knew it!_

A loud and clear _I told you so._

Mandy grabs Amy's hand.

“Aw, what are all those faces for? Did I startle you?” the Doctor asks with a pout, pressing his hands against his chest as he looks at the girls and the half-Smilers, before grinning widely once more. “What am I saying, of course not! There's no way all the itty-bitty monsters in this room would be scared of little old me! Just _look around!”_ he cackles, arms thrown wide once more as he twirls in his spot. “I _love_ the aesthetics! Classy, all that rocky and dark look, _perfect_ for a dungeon! They don't make torture chambers like they used to, don't you agree? They all lack the _ambience._ But you actually did it!” he adds, laughing some more as he finally stops spinning and throws his head back, cupping his hands around his ears with an almost delighted grin. “Listen, listen, _listen!_ Don't you hear it? No? Well, _allow me!”_ he roars, any and all mirth turning cutting and fanged as he bows his head, pulls his screwdriver out of his pocket with a sharp move—

The grate keeping the tentacle-stingers at bay blows off with a tiny puff, the purple-red things rising threateningly, glowing blue spots on their sides, and everyone rushes away with some startled yelps.

“Now, _listen!”_ the Doctor shouts once more, thumbing the screwdriver—

And, above the whirring, an agonized moan fills the chamber.

“_**Listen!”**_

The electrodes light up, zap whatever's inside the central well, and the moan turns to shrieking.

The Doctor throws his head back and laughs.

Amy pulls Mandy close, covering the girl's ears, unable to look away from the man who fell on her shed so many years ago, the man who saved her from cracks in the universe and face-stealing aliens, and the destruction of the Earth. The same man she had sat at her table just some couple hours ago, and held his hand as he almost broke under the weight of his memories of Last Christmas, two days ago, when his laughing face invaded everyone's minds and a burning planet appeared on the sky before vanishing as if it had never been there in the first place.

Right now, this man is not Amy's Raggedy Doctor, but the deranged Harold Saxon.

“Stop it. Stop it!” the Queen shouts, and the Doctor pulls up his screwdriver, turning it off with the movement, and the screams cease. “What is going on?” she asks, softer now, as she looks at the still widely grinning Doctor, who pockets his screwdriver calmly with a chuckle.

“Oh, you still don't see it? Or is it that you don't want to see? Come on! You have brains, _this_ is more than proof enough!” he tells them, gesturing at the room, at the electrodes zapping at his back and the half-Smilers pointing what look like taser guns at a wobbly tentacle-stinger, the other one gone. “Then again, you are so ridiculously _pathetic._ So stupid, so willfully _ignorant._ That's why you're such good little monsters, isn't it? As long as it's _fun_ or _pretty,_ who bloody cares?!” he exclaims with a bark of laughter, once more spinning around with his condescending grin turning sharp. “Let's kill people for entertainment! Let's torture people into making us pretty things! Let's not ask questions so we can keep. Being. _Happy!”_ he roars, his grin turning into a snarl faster than any Smiler could. “Let's drag the Doctor into our bloody messes so he can fix our mistakes and kill the people that we tortured and twisted into monsters! Because that's what _he_ does, always cleaning up after your disgusting selves, always _losing_ so you can keep winning, and winning, and _winning!_ Let us _look away!_ Let _someone else_ press the _big red button!”_

Mandy is trembling in Amy's arms, her own tightly wrapped around her waist. Amy's hands are still covering the girl's ears, but she's pretty sure she can catch the Doctor's angry tone, if not his words.

No one moves, too busy being frozen in either fear or guilt. Amy's not sure which one, because she can't look away from the Doctor's dark gaze, regardless of the tears slipping down her cheeks.

The only sounds in the room are the soft thudding of the tentacle-stinger against the low wall surrounding it, the buzzing of the electrodes, and the Doctor's panting.

Until, that is, the Doctor huffs, humorless, and grins.

“Let the Doctor kill for us.”

And he pulls out his screwdriver.

“Doctor, wait—” the Queen calls, taking a step closer with her hands up, but a dark look from the Time Lord freezes her in place.

“Or what? Will you chain me down and torture me into doing your bidding too? Well, _joke's on you!_ The bloody chains are already on me, all over me, and all because it's always easier to be _cruel!”_ he roars again, snarling like something wild and rabid, as he hunches forward. “Oh, I'm no saint, no shining knight or perfect hero. I'm a monster, a killer, with more blood on my hands than there are souls on this ship. But this? Not even _I_ would stoop so low. Not even _I_ would be such a _monster!_ I have captured, tortured and manipulated people, but never _ceaselessly,_ and never for _centuries._ And I have never _used_ someone like this without _killing them first!_ But you are _the human race,_ you would never do that, you can _do no wrong!_ Only you can, and you do, even worse than that. Because you've _forced_ me to act now, you lot of _inferior lifeforms,_ blinder than a Jagrafess, more stubborn than a Sontaran, and worse monsters than the bloody _Daleks!_ Even _they_ are better than you, because Daleks _hate!”_ he shouts, the electrodes sparking almost as in answer to his rage, before he calms down with some gulped breaths. “You can't even use hatred as an excuse, because you don't act in hatred. You act because you _wanted,”_ he tells them almost softly, huffing with a tiny smile twisting his lips, incredulous and so fake that it hurts. “And now I have to act too, because there are Fixed Points riding on the continuity of your pathetic and disgusting little race. I should kill all but the indispensable ones once I'm done with you all, and leave your bodies to rot.”

The tone is almost conversational, and Amy finds herself shaking her head without words, holding her sobs at bay.

This… This can't be right, this can't be the Doctor, her Raggedy Doctor. This just can't _be._

“You're right. You should,” the old man, Hawthorne, sighs, looking at his feet with his shoulders slumped in defeat. “What we're doing here…”

“What is it. Tell me what is going on _right now,”_ the Queen orders, sharp as a blade and as unbending as steel, and Hawthorne meets her eyes with a nod.

“There's no engine vibration because there's no engine,” the Doctor answers instead, jolly and cheerful, clapping his hands together before nodding at the tentacle-stinger waving around. “_That_ is your engine, the big fella in the center of Starship UK. And this,” he adds, pointing with a thumb over his shoulder, at the well at his back. “This here is the exposed pain center of the creature's brain. The accelerator. And that?” he adds almost nonchalantly, pointing at the electrodes. “That's the finger pressing the button to _go faster.”_

Amy covers her mouth with a hand, the pieces coming together in her mind despite how much she wants to convince herself he's wrong, while the Queen slowly shakes her head.

“Of course, you already knew. This bunch here, they're all acting under your orders. They're loyal to the death, loyal to the one that gives them the order to _torture_ this creature _unceasingly._ How could they not? That's the only reason they can 'live with themselves', doing what they do, torturing this beast and killing all those that protest. They tell themselves they're following orders, and they go to sleep with a clean conscience.”

“That's not true, I—”

“Fifty years old, aren't you, Lizzie?” the Doctor interrupts, still in that calm tone from before, but with his sharp smirk starting to grow again. “Then, how come you have a two-hundred-year-old mask that fits your face _perfectly?_ Your biological clock is stopped, so how can you tell between ten or a hundred years by looking in a mirror?”

“You can't be saying…”

“I don't know. What do you think I'm saying?”

And the room falls silent again, disbelief and denial filling it like a horrible stench, before Hawthorne sighs.

“Ma'am. If you could please come here…”

Amy turns, follows the Queen's line of sight to the computer Hawthorne is gesturing to, and, after the Doctor's condescending grin and nod when she looks at him, Amy joins them at the machine. The Doctor turns to another set of computers, ignoring them, already knowing what will happen.

When Amy sees the two buttons, Forget and Abdicate, and sees the image of the Queen appear on the screen, she realizes she knows what she'll see as well.

“If you are watching this—” the Queen in the screen starts, cutting herself for a moment, while the actual Queen sits down slowly, heavily, in the single chair in front of the computer. “If _I_ am watching this, then I have found my way to the Tower of London. The creature you are looking at is called a Star Whale,” she explains, with some charts and 3D models appearing on the screen, all of them depicting a whale-like creature with tentacles instead of tail and many short fins on its belly, as well as an anglerfish rod on its head. “Once, there were millions of them. They lived in the depths of space and, according to legend, guided the early space travelers through the asteroid belts. This one, as far as we are aware, is the last of its kind. And what we have done to it breaks my heart. The Earth was burning. Our sun had turned on us and every nation had fled to the skies. Our children screamed as the skies grew hotter. And then it came, like a miracle. The last of the Star Whales. We trapped it, we built our ship around it, and we rode on its back to safety. If you wish our voyage to continue, then you must press the Forget button. Be again the heart of this nation, untainted. If not, press the other button. Your reign will end, the Star Whale will be released, and our ship will disintegrate. I hope I keep the strength to make the right decision.”

The recording ends.

Amy's mind is whirling so fast that it's like there's only white noise in her skull, all the conflict and fear and _I voted for this_ leaving her strangely empty.

She voted for this. This is what she was shown in the booth, and what she chose to forget. And, now that she has learned about it again, she realizes she can't fault her past self. The difference is that, right now, she wouldn't choose to forget.

It would solve nothing. The Doctor already knows.

Amy knows now that the reason she chose to forget in the first place was to spare him from this, and not to spare the Starship, like she feared before. Well, maybe to spare them too from his anger, but that wasn't the main reason.

The Doctor was Amy's choice. Because, if he didn't know about this, about what the people of the Starship were doing, he wouldn't try to stop it, he wouldn't be faced with this choice, with this – this horrifying realization that _this is what we become._

True, he could always choose to leave, to turn his back on the Starship and the Space Whale and let them dig themselves out of their own problems, but…

The Doctor sent the Atraxi away, warned them, and many before them, that Earth was out of bounds. He protected humanity, over and over again, in the past and in the future, and this is how they repaid him. Enslaving other species, a gentle creature that just happened to be useful for what they needed at the time.

Humanity has a history of that, and it obviously doesn't get better, even after all the equality movement in the last centuries.

The Doctor may act like he doesn't care, but Amy knows better. He could leave, he could ignore the pleas for help, but in the end, here he is now, fiddling with some computers and… what…

“What are you doing?” the Queen asks softly, standing once more by Amy's side and also looking at the Doctor.

He's typing, staring intently at the screen, and fiddling with some knobs every now and then. It doesn't look like too much so far, but Amy knows just how dangerous the Doctor can be with just words. He managed to code a virus that put _all the clocks in the world_ to 0:00 hours, after all, in less than it took for Amy to drive them to the hospital. He is _not_ harmless, no matter if he may look like it.

“I'm going to put the Star Whale in a permanent vegetative state. I'm trying to figure out how its brain works so that I can neutralize its pain center alongside all its cognitive functions and awareness. A true, organic engine,” the Doctor answers with a humorless grin, never looking away from the screen, and Amy's stomach drops to her feet.

“That'll be like killing it.”

The Doctor stops tapping, shoulders tensing, as he glares into the middle distance.

“Trust me, I'd much rather leave and let all these miserable creatures continue to snivel in their own guilt, but I can't. I _can't._ If I leave now time twists, it twists so _much_ and I can't follow, but there's a fixed point and I _can't **leave!”**_ he roars, clutching his head in his hands as if physically pained, though he jerks it up to glare at them as soon as Amy takes a step closer. “I can't leave, it must happen, I can't leave,” he breathes out, almost like he doesn't realize he's talking, before relaxing suddenly as he tilts his head, listening—

The Space Whale is crying, screaming in agony with every zap. Amy can't hear it now, but she'll never forget it. Most important, though, is the reason they managed to hear it in the first place, how they realized it was happening because _someone else_ could hear it and made it so they could too.

The electrodes zap the whale again and Amy flinches when the Doctor takes in a deep breath, her eyes going wide and her hands trembling at her sides.

He can hear it. All the time, ever since they stepped foot aboard Spaceship UK.

He can _still_ hear it.

“I can't leave. I can't destroy this bloody ship, no matter how much I want to. And there's no way in the universe I'm going to leave this creature to suffer for these bastards' amusement,” the Doctor adds, calmer, silencing any protests that might have come from the Queen or Hawthorne with a pointed glare. “So, yes, I'm going to destroy its brain. Even when I try to do good, to be merciful, I end up with blood on my hands,” he whispers, almost to himself, with a depreciating huff. “Doctor Rules Number 1 and 2. No killing, no hurting unnecessarily. And Rule 3, one chance. This is your one chance. Do something like this again and Rules 1 and 2 go. I _will_ make you suffer,” he tells the Queen, the most serious and _here_ he's been since they entered the Tower.

Without waiting for an answer, the Doctor turns back to the screen, warning delivered and conversation over.

There's no need to speak for the others to realize they are better off not crossing the Doctor, not even addressing him, so they all move out of his way, technicians, half-Smilers, 21st century humans and the Queen of the United Kingdom of Britain and North Ireland alike.

Sitting against a wall with Mandy leaning against her side, Amy barely keeps her tears at bay.

This is what the Doctor does, go around saving people from criminals and careless guards that would execute a whole planet to get to who they want. And how do the people he saves pay him back? Not a thank you, not a hug, just point him at a problem of their own making and force him to make the tough choice for them.

For a moment, Amy feels almost _ashamed_ of being human.

And yet, if humanity is so bad, why does the Doctor hang around Earth? Sure, she met him by accident, because the TARDIS was damaged and crash-landed in her garden, but the Atraxi's recordings made it look like he has a history of being around humanity.

_“The human race, ladies and gentlemen! The greatest monsters in the universe!”_

… Is it because they need _minding?_

_“Trust me, I'd much rather leave and let all these miserable creatures continue to snivel in their own guilt, but I can't. I_ can't. _If I leave now time twists, it twists so_ much _and I can't follow, but there's a fixed point and I_ can't **leave!”**

Could it be because of something else? He had said his race was called the Time Lords, but he had never said _why._ Amy had joked it was because of ego, but… What if there was a _reason_ they were called that? He's _the Doctor,_ even if he doesn't want to be called such. Is it a title or a station? Is Time Lord a mere name or a position? A job description?

Amy looks up at the Doctor, who is now fiddling with the internals of a different machine with an expression of utmost concentration on his face, sonicking something every now and then to either scan it or assemble it into something different. He tilts his head from time to time, as if listening or trying to get a different view of the current problem.

She has so many questions, but she'll never get any answers. She's sure that, as soon as they're done here, he'll drop her off at her place without even a goodbye, vanishing once more. If they ever hear from him again, it'll be in the news, some report or other about an alien invasion being thwarted or some unexplainable phenomena that ended up mysteriously solving itself.

The Doctor, her Raggedy Doctor.

If only the universe could see just what a wonderful person he is, under the grumpiness and twisted sense of humor. If only they could see what they have turned him into, how much this alien, the loneliest of aliens, _cares._

As quietly as she can, Amy sniffles and wipes a tear from her cheek.

How could anyone hurt someone this old and kind?

“Timmy!” Mandy exclaims, jumping from her spot and startling Amy back to the present.

There are kids coming into the room, carrying parts or food for the Winders, as the half-Smilers are called, and it is to a short boy that Mandy runs to.

“What are children doing here?” Amy asks Hawthorne, who is standing next to the Queen, sitting despondently in front of the computer with the buttons, gaze lost.

“Protesters and citizens of limited value are fed to the beast. For some reason, it won't eat the children. You're the first adults it's spared. Then again…” he explains, with his last sentence dragging into nothingness as he turns to look at the Doctor, who is deaf to the humans all around.

_Then again, maybe it knew the Doctor would be able to help. Even if it is by killing it and leaving it as nothing more than an organic engine,_ Amy finishes in her mind, and, too disturbed by the thought, turns away.

Mandy is standing in front of her friend, who has just stepped back – and the tentacle-stinger, freed from the grate by the Doctor when they first got here, curls into itself to rub the smooth part of its top softly against Mandy's back.

The girl startles, moving away, but when the tentacle stays curled, stinger pressed safely against it so that it doesn't accidentally hurt anyone, Mandy extends her hand and carefully pets it.

And the tentacle _lets her._

A moment later, her friend – Timmy? – reaches for it as well, and the tentacle wobbles between one and the other, rubbing almost reassuringly against their arms, much like a cat after the owner is done with a long and tiring day.

Amy's breath catches in her throat.

_“Our children screamed as the skies grew hotter. And then it came, like a miracle.”_

_“For some reason, it won't eat the children.”_

_“This one, as far as we are aware, is the last of its kind.”_

_“I'm the last one left.”_

_“So, that's how it works, isn't it? No interfering unless you can get something out of it… or there are children crying.”_

_“And then it came, like a miracle. The last of the Star Whales.”_

“Wait,” Amy whispers, eyes wide but not seeing the children petting one of the Star Whale's tentacle-stingers, or the Doctor fiddling with a half-dismantled console, or a heartbroken Queen.

Instead, she sees a mocking grin turn to worry as a raggedy man kneels in front of a scared seven-year-old. She sees him smile reassuringly over his shoulder as he squeezes her hands in his big and cold one, and sees him smirk as she leans on his shoulder to read a message writing itself on a piece of blank paper. She sees him cook and offer ice-cream, accept an apple with a smiley face cut clumsily with a sad smile, scowl at passerbyes ignoring a crying child.

Amy feels her Raggedy Doctor's hands gripping her shoulders reassuringly as he kneels in front of her to promise her he'll be back, hears him give her tasks with all the confidence of someone who knows they'll be done to his standards, and sees him make a face to cheer her up as he tells her the truth when any other adult would have lied.

_Finally,_ Amy knows what must be done.

“Doctor, wait!” she shouts as she jumps to her feet, but though the Doctor turns to look at her over his shoulder instead of ignoring her like he has done with every other human, he continues with his work.

So, Amy rushes to the buttons, to the Queen sitting in front of them, and grabs her wrist.

“Sorry, your Majesty. I'm going to need a hand,” Amy tells the startled woman, and, using her surprise, slaps the unresisting hand on the button.

The _Abdicate_ button.

A chorus of 'no!' echoes in the room before the metallic clangs start – and the whole of the Starship shakes.

For a moment, as she holds tightly to the Queen and the computer, Hawthorne draped over them both, Amy fears she made the wrong choice.

But then, the shaking stops, and the ship doesn't break apart.

“What have you done?” the Queen asks her, wide-eyed, as Hawthorne moves off them to check some screens.

Amy smiles, relieved and surprised despite her previous confidence.

“Nothing at all,” she answers, helping the Queen to her feet as she stands, before they both turn to Hawthorne. “Am I right?”

“We've increased speed,” he tells them, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, and Amy grins triumphantly.

“Yeah, well, it helps you're no longer torturing the pilot,” she tells them with a huff before turning to the Queen, who still looks confused and startled, and softens her voice. “The Star Whale didn't come like a miracle all those years ago. It volunteered. You didn't have to trap it or torture it, that was all just you. It came because it couldn't stand to watch your children cry,” she tells her, grabbing her hands in hers and squeezing them, before slowly turning to meet Hawthorne's and the other Winders' eyes. “What if you were really old, and really kind and alone? Your whole race dead. No future. What couldn't you do then?” she asks, turning at last to the Doctor, who is kneeling on the ground, a hand hovering over the side of his head, and looking even more disbelieving than the humans, despite the glint in his eyes telling Amy he knows what she's about to say. “If you were that old, and that kind, no matter how prickly on the outside… and the very last of your kind… you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry.”

* * *

The observation deck is empty, only Koschei standing there, arms crossed against his chest, staring out at the sea of stars all around them.

As soon as Mandy and her friend tackled Amelia into a hug, laughing, and the Queen and her Winders shared some sad and relieved looks, Koschei had bolted, leaving even Theta's ghost behind.

Not that it matters now. Theta is in his mind, after all, so, even if there's no other living being around, he's still there, standing shoulder to shoulder, looking out.

They don't talk, lost in their musings and the Space Whale's new song. There's still pain in it, aftershocks and soreness after those centuries of torture. But the joy, the relief at having its freedom back, at being able to _choose_ to help once more, despite all that these disgusting creatures have put it through…

Koschei's next breath goes out in a tremulous shudder that makes even his shoulders shake, the grip his arms hold on his sides tightening for a moment.

“Is that what it would have been like if I had accepted?” he asks softly, not looking away from the stars even when Theta turns to him.

“I don't know. Maybe. Probably with a lot more wariness – after all, I knew you far longer than this whale has known humans,” the ghost answers after a moment, keeping his tone light with his last sentence.

Then again, this Theta is just a ghost of the Doctor, a remnant, an image left behind after a hurried mind-link. There's no way he can know what the actual Doctor would have done, even with access to Koschei's own memories.

_“I forgive you.”_

If Koschei had taken the offer back then, on the _Valiant,_ or even after he'd been cuffed, would the Doctor have felt like this? Still hurt, still healing, but so relieved and _glad?_

And what about the landfill, the warehouse, the mansion? If Koschei had accepted then, had agreed to help, even if he never agreed to travel together at the time? Would it have been like this too?

… But he couldn't choose, not then, not with the drums so much louder than any other time before. No matter how much he'd wanted to, when the Doctor had outright said it, strapped down as he'd been at the time. Without the drums…

Well, without the drums, things would have been completely different from the start. So different, in fact, it doesn't bear thinking about.

A Time Lord's timeline isn't like another being's. Koschei can't just kick back and flip between 'maybe' and 'possible' and 'could be' and 'might have been' like he could with anything else, and it isn't just because they're in the past. A Time Lord's timeline is infinitely more complex by nature, and, though they can be messed with, their pasts tampered with, it's extremely hard to decipher possibilities, more so the closer the timeline is to the viewer, or the target Time Lord to the observing one.

Theta's and Koschei's timelines first came in contact long before the Academy and the drums, so much that there's no chance for Koschei to ever glimpse any possible deviation there could have been.

Even with the Valeyard and the Matrix thrown in the mix, their timelines had remained immovable and inscrutable to each other. Not even the Valeyard's, possible future version of the Doctor he was supposed to be, had been accessible.

He'll never be now, just another Could've Been, like many others before him, turned Never-Were.

Just like this one with him now, an echo of something that, if only he'd taken the metaphorical hand any of the times it had been offered, could have been a real solid Doctor instead of the ghost of a butchered mind-link.

“Oi, I can hear you thinking, you know!” Theta pouts, straightening indignantly, and Koschei can't help his snort.

“I doubt that. You were never that good with telepathy,” he pokes, relishing in the aggravated look that earns him and the childish pout that follows.

“Well, you were never _that_ good with jiggery-pokery! I had to keep telling you what to do with those electrodes.”

“And you were half as useful as a blind human with its hands tied behind its back. As usual.”

“Oi!”

“And would you stop referring to Field Technological Repair and Assembly as 'jiggery-pokery'? It's embarrassing, frankly.”

“It's way faster and more practical than calling it _that._ Gets me less questions too.”

“You're dealing with humans, what did you expect?”

They snort in unison, smiling and once more staring at the stars, but the mirth doesn't last that long.

So, it is immersed in solemn silence that Amelia finds them – _him._

Only him. From now until forever, it will only ever be just Koschei.

Amelia is smiling as she practically skips to his side, adrenaline and cheer oozing out of her, and Theta pops out of existence the second before she takes his place. Koschei's folded arms press tighter against his chest, but he doesn't look away from the stars.

For a moment, she stays silent, observing him and calming down from her triumphant high, but it doesn't take her long before she waves something white in front of him.

“From her Majesty. She says there will be no more secrets on Starship UK,” she explains, stilling so Koschei can identify the mask in her hands.

He doesn't react though, and so she eventually lets the mask drop, sobering.

“You could have killed every single person on this ship,” Koschei finally tells her, keeping his voice level and never looking away from the stars.

After his outburst, down at the Tower, he feels depleted, empty. How long since he last rested, since he slept? How long until he'll be able to? He has the feeling he will never be able to close his eyes again without seeing the Doctor's lifeless body, almost imperceptible smile on his burnt and slashed face, and feel his world crumble all around him.

Amelia is silent, eyes moving from the starry outside to his face a couple times before she settles for staring down at the mask in her hands.

“You could've killed a Star Whale,” she answers in a tone that is equal parts petulant and somber.

She's not trying to be contrary, he's pretty sure about that, but he can't help but feel a stab of burning hot ire straight through his hearts.

He tilts his head back with a humorless snort, grinning sharply and rocking with the movement, forcing himself to not take his eyes off the stars or his hands off his arms. If he moves, if he even dares look at her… Koschei's not sure what will happen if he does, but he doesn't trust himself.

_“We will initiate the Final Sanction. The end of time will come at my hand. The rupture will continue until it rips the Time Vortex apart.”_

“Ah, but that's the way of things. Always, _always_ the same. Save one person or a hundred. One life for a country, for a planet. One planet in exchange for the whole of creation,” he chuckles, grin widening as his eyes inevitably turn to a bright reddish speck in the starry tapestry on the other side of the window, invisible to human eyes.

The suns are still there, but Gallifrey is gone. It was the Doctor's choice, to end the Time War. And it was the Master's, to send Gallifrey back when he chose one person over the whole planet.

It was never about creation, about the universe, about the humans. It was about the Doctor, about Theta, forever and always.

_“Get out of the way.”_

For the whole of creation, the Doctor sacrificed Gallifrey. For the Doctor, the Master sacrificed Gallifrey.

But in the end, it was useless. The Doctor is gone now, and Koschei is adrift in the vastness of space and time, lost and alone.

“… I would destroy a thousand worlds to get one person back. But that's not how it works. It never does,” he whispers, unsure if he's actually saying it aloud or in his head, and sees Theta appear again from the corner of his eye. “It's always one who pays the price of the whole. One life in exchange for the planet, for the universe.”

_“You are diseased, albeit a disease of our own making. No more.”_

Ire burns again, and he feels his shoulders tense and his hands claw his own arms, but Koschei chooses to focus on the starry sky over the memory of Rassilon's face, snarling at it instead of reacting.

“It's wrong. It's _wrong!_ It's wrong but they still do it, they still choose to sacrifice one for the others, to _torture_ one for the benefit of the _bastards_ in power, _to get what they want,_ and _it's not **fair!”**_ he roars, dropping his head and squeezing his eyes tightly shut, hands shooting to grab the sides of his head as he tries to mute the drums, the never-ending drums threatening to swallow him whole—

_“Choose your enemy well. We are many. The Master is but one.”_

_“The link is broken. Back into the Time War, Rassilon! Back into Hell!”_

His next exhale comes out as a chocked sob, and Koschei freezes.

Those aren't the drums, the Doctor took them. That's his own heartsbeat, drumming in his ears as his anger burns, nothing more.

“It isn't always like that,” Theta whispers from somewhere in front of him, and, when he opens his eyes, Koschei sees he's kneeling on the ground so that their eyes can meet. “I saved you, didn't I?” he adds with a small but bright smile.

“I wasn't supposed to survive.”

“Now, none of that! That's for me to decide, you know. And I made my choice a long time ago,” Theta rebukes, waving a hand as if to wipe away any protests. “Besides, you did save my life. Sure, you wanted to get back at Rassilon, but you could have done it after he struck me down, or knocked me out of the way yourself. And yet, you didn't,” he adds, straightening and dusting his trousers as Koschei uncurls, looking into those warm brown eyes framed by the endless tapestry of stars and city lights outside the window. “It's hard, Koschei, it really is. But sometimes, you can really save everyone. Don't give up, alright?”

And, with a wide grin on his face and not waiting for an answer, Theta vanishes.

Koschei takes in a deep breath, clenching his fists, and focuses on the stars.

“Never give up, never give in, huh? The Doctor, the sanctimonious twat that makes people better,” he snorts softly, taking another deep breath as the echo of his heartsbeat finally vanishes from his hearing.

“Well, it can't hurt to try, right Doctor?” Amelia asks calmly, a hint of a smile in her voice as she tentatively grabs his hand in one of her warm ones.

Koschei winces and finally meets her eyes.

“Don't call me that, please. That's not who I am,” he asks her, pain and sorrow in his own voice, and, after a moment of surprise, she squeezes his hand with a sad smile.

“Alright, I won't. But you really need to give me something to work with or I'm going back to calling you Raggedy Man,” she tells him, her sincerity turning to harmless needling, and, this time, his snort is actually sincere.

“You drive a tough bargain, Amy Pond. But I'll see what I can do,” he concedes with a magnanimous nod, and Amy chuckles before startling when she finally processes his words.

“You called me Amy!”

“That's what you want to be called, isn't it?” he asks her, calm and sincere, and, after a moment of surprise, she smiles and nods. “No promises I won't fall back on Amelia every now and then, but I'll try.”

“Thank you, Raggedy Man. And, you know… It may be hard, but it _is_ possible. To save everyone, I mean. I'm always going to be here to help you find another way when you're stuck, alright? You and me, together, we'll find a way to make it better,” she tells him with a warm smile and bright brown eyes, paler yet so similar to those other ones that still haunt him.

For some long seconds, 4.8 to be exact, Koschei can only stare at her in disbelief, not even breathing, as he runs her words through his mind over and over again. Her smile softens and, still moving slowly yet confidently, she lets go of his hand and wraps her arms around his neck, pulling his head onto her shoulder.

Tentatively, almost as if he isn't the one directing the movement, his hands pull up to rest on her shoulder blades. His breathing is tremulous but his sight is clear when he finally realizes that, yes, Amy is hugging him.

Him, Koschei, the Master, the murderous alien that went all crazy psycho on them all down in the Tower.

_“Uhm. Are you an incredibly clever and charismatic psychopath that has killed and manipulated people to his own aims without remorse?”_

_“More of a sociopath, actually, but yes, I am.”_

… Well, he _did_ warn her.

His chuckle is almost breathless as he squeezes Amy close for but a second before pulling out of the hug with a mischievous, but not crazy, grin.

“And what if I don't want to?” he asks her mockingly, and, smiling herself, Amy taps his forehead with the mask still in her hands.

“I'll have to whack you on the head until you're convinced otherwise, of course!”

The two of them chuckle at the joke, disentangling fully and turning to look at the stars again. Koschei's smile doesn't last that long, though, not when one persistent thought keeps circling his mind like a vulture.

“How did you know? That the Star Whale wouldn't just run away. How did you know?” he asks Amy, turning to her to be met with a sad smile.

“I've seen it before,” she answers simply and, swallowing back a tremulous breath, Koschei turns to the window once more.

Amy's hand wraps around his own, reassuringly, after a moment, and he feels the uneasiness in his shoulders mounting.

Koschei is not the Doctor, he's nowhere close. He just acted because of the Fixed Point that's coming for this ship, something that's starting to _really_ make his skin crawl. He didn't want to save humanity, or this shred of it. He didn't want to save the Star Whale, though something about people using others for their own aims _really_ ticks him off after the whole drums thing got cleared up – and he's not poking that thought again until the end of time, he's _not sorry_ for all he did up to that point. Drums or not, he was fully conscious of his actions then, and a new piece of knowledge won't make him suddenly start sobbing about all his past choices or make him feel sorry for himself.

He is the Master, _was_ the Master, and all his choices, all the pain inflicted and lives taken, were _intentional._ Whatever he wants to take back has _nothing_ to do with knowing about the drums, just like the Doctor's choice to destroy Gallifrey didn't change despite having lived with it, when he was given a second chance at the Naismith mansion.

The choices he hates, the choices he would take _again,_ are still the same as when the drums were still beating relentlessly inside his skull, and that much won't change.

And the same applies to how repulsed and awed he is at humanity's talent for cruelty and evil.

It doesn't mean he can't appreciate other qualities displayed by some of its individuals, though.

“I'm not kind. I was serious about the blood on my hands and all I've done. And I'm not going to apologize about that,” he tells Amy, once more meeting her eyes.

Amy smiles ruefully and squeezes his hand.

“I know. But I also know that someone who isn't the slightest bit kind wouldn't smile at a scared seven-year-old girl,” she points out, mischievousness in her expression, and Koschei looks away with a huff and an eyeroll.

“Keep deluding yourself,” he tells her dismissively, but doesn't let her hand go.

When she bumps her shoulder against his, Koschei can't help but smirk, the expression softening when he catches Theta's beaming smile on the window's reflection.

Alright, so _maybe_ he has a soft spot for scared little girls. No one is perfect, not even Koschei.

And maybe, and that's a very slight maybe, he could learn to be alright with that.

* * *

They're back in the TARDIS after leaving without a goodbye, chuckling, when Amy realizes that this is it.

Despite all her words in the observation deck, Amy was promised just one trip, and it has come to an end. Maybe she could talk him into going out again, to see more of Starship UK, but Amy doesn't feel like walking down those alien yet so familiar streets, not after the adventure of meeting the Queen and almost being eaten by a Star Whale, and liberating said Star Whale while keeping the Starship safe and whole.

So, Amy deflates, looking down at the mask still in her hands, her 'souvenir' of the experience, while the Raggedy Man fiddles with some buttons and knots and levers, glaring down at them and grumbling under his breath as they keep moving back to their previous positions. Amy can't help but snort at the scene.

“You're the strangest alien I've met,” she tells him, finally hopping to his side as he glares down at the controls, as if he could make them obey with just one look.

“How many aliens have you met?”

“Other than you? Prisoner Zero, the Atraxi and a Star Whale,” she answers calmly, leaning against the console as he looks at her with a lifted eyebrow.

“And out of all those, _I_ am the strangest? Nice to see I've still got it,” he chirps while puffing up proudly, as if it was an actual compliment.

Taking it in stride, Amy chuckles and rolls her eyes, before her attention goes back to the mask once more.

“What do you want to do with it?” she asks the Raggedy Man, offering the mask, and he just spares it a glance before going back to wrestling with a lever, which keeps pushing back to its previous position as soon as he lets it go.

“It's yours, Lizzie gave it to you. Seeing how there's no way you could use it as she did, it's just another decorative item now, so you can keep it. You can show it to all the visits and tell them the Queen of the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland gave it to you after you saved the country,” he answers with a bright grin, before glaring down at the lever once more. “A far more cooperative queen than you, you royal pain in the backside, and she was _human.”_

Shrugging off that last comment, Amy chooses to laugh instead.

“You know what? The funniest part of that is that they might even believe it,” she tells him before sobering, squeezing the mask one more time as she makes her mind. “Look, I know you said—”

A phone rings.

Startled, Amy and the Raggedy Man exchange a look, before Amy pushes away from the console to move around it. A phone, a silver and dark red flip phone, sits innocently in a slot shaped perfectly for it. The tiny screen on its cover is alight, and it buzzes softly as it rings.

“You have a phone?” Amy asks, dumbfounded, and the Raggedy Man grins widely with a shrug, gesturing around.

“Phone box,” he answers simply, before nodding at her to pick it up.

Wary but curious, Amy takes the phone and flips it open, pressing it against her ear while looking at the attentive Raggedy Man.

“Hello?” she asks, almost expecting to hear someone blow a raspberry, or for the Raggedy Man to start laughing while chanting 'innocent, innocent'.

Instead, she hears a man's voice, coming through as clear as if she was back in 2010 instead of in the middle of space in the twenty-ninth century.

“This is the Prime Minister. I need to speak with the Doctor.”

“Sorry, who?” Amy asks, more startled at there being an answer than at the words.

“The Prime Minister, I'm the Prime Minister. And I'm looking for the Doctor.”

Amy blinks, looks down at the phone to see an actual number on the screen, and pulls it back to her ear, ignoring the Raggedy Man's increasing amusement.

“Seriously, who?”

“The Prime Minister,” the man huffs, clearly running out of patience. “I need to speak with the Doctor, is he there or not?”

“Ah, yes, just a moment,” she tells him before pulling the phone away and covering the bottom half with her hand, staring wide-eyed at the Raggedy Man. “Says he's the Prime Minister. First the Queen and now the Prime Minister. Get about, don't you?” she asks, swallowing a bout of hysterical laughter as she wraps her mind around that.

The Raggedy Man rolls his eyes.

“_I_ was the Prime Minister, Amy. You know that.”

“Yeah, well, he's not you. The voice is definitely not yours.”

“Well, which Prime Minister is he then?”

Amy repeats the question into the phone, glaring at the Raggedy Man as she realizes she's acting like his secretary.

He grins back widely and unrepentantly, knowing perfectly what she's thinking.

“The British one,” the man on the phone answers, and, when Amy asks him which one, “Winston Churchill.”

And that's when Amy slaps her hand back down on the phone and hands it to the amused Raggedy Man.

“Winston Churchill. It's for you,” she tells him, practically forcing the phone on him when he blinks at her owlishly, surprised.

“Winston Churchill?” he repeats, blinking in surprise, before pulling the phone up to his ear. “Prime Minister, hello! What's up?” he says cheerfully, unruffled, and Amy barely holds back the urge to strangle him.

_You did that on purpose!_ she mouths at him, huffing, and he bats his eyelashes in a clearly fake _who, me?_

He turns with a hum, staring at the screen, filled with lazily spinning graphics and circular glyphs, and Amy rolls her eyes.

Seriously. Worse than the aliens. Er, the _other_ aliens, the ones that were actively trying to get her killed.

“Oh, don't know, let me check my schedule,” he says into the phone as he presses some buttons on the console, different graphics filling the screen for a moment before a date pops up. “Sure, I'll stop by. See you in a minute!” he answers with a grin and, without waiting for an answer, flips the phone shut.

“Are we seriously going to meet Winston Churchill?” Amy asks excitedly, feeling her own smile begin to grow.

“Of course not,” the Raggedy Man answers with an eyeroll, dropping the phone in its slot and moving around the console to fiddle with the controls once more. “I'm going to drop you back at your place, five minutes after we left, and then _I_ will go see what dear Mister Churchill is so angsty about. I promised you one trip, so, there you go! One trip delivered, with space and aliens and the future Queen of the United Kingdom all included. Other people had far less than you did, you should be happy.”

But Amy doesn't, she feels as far from happy as she could ever be.

The Raggedy Man is leaving again. And while, yes, she _does_ want to go back home, resume her life, how can she just hop off the TARDIS after this amazing trip, danger notwithstanding? Or, actually, make that danger included, because, without that edge, they would have never met the Queen, or saved the Space Whale.

Besides, who is going to keep an eye on the Raggedy Man if Amy goes? He _needs_ someone, he needs to be reminded that he can do good without hurting people, he needs someone to help him deal with his own demons.

Amy promised she'd be by his side, she told him she would help. And she _will_ keep that promise.

“Three trips,” Amy blurts out, straightening and crossing her arms against her chest when the Raggedy Man turns to her with a small frown. “You said you would give me one trip because of the time I had to wait, right? Well, I deserve three. This one was for those twelve years when you said five minutes,” she explains, lifting a hand to start counting, cementing her determination when the Raggedy Man ignores the levers shifting on their own in favor of listening to her. “I deserve a second one for these last two years. You said yourself you only meant to be away for a day, but not only were you gone for two years, you also left _without saying anything,”_ she chastises, but doesn't manage to get a reaction out of him, which makes her last argument shakier. “And the third trip is, uh, the third trip is for the services provided. Yep, that's it. I gave you food, _twice,_ and I helped with Prisoner Zero, using my acting skills. And now, with the Space Whale, I helped too. So, I deserve payment for that, and I want it to be an extra trip,” she manages to explain, strengthening her resolve once more.

And then, silence fills the control room, only the soft humming of machinery all around them.

“Are you seriously trying to bargain more travel time out of me?” the Raggedy Man finally asks, still frowning softly but completely serious.

“No. I'm asking for my rightful payment,” Amy corrects, lifting her chin and hoping she looks as stern and unmovable as the Raggedy Man did when dealing with the Atraxi.

“That's the Amelia I remember!” the Raggedy Man exclaims, grinning from ear to ear, as he claps his hands, pleased. “I'm warning you, things are going to be as dangerous as this last trip, or more. And Churchill is waiting in 1941, so that means no telling people _anything_ about the future. Are you sure you're up to the challenge?” he asks, his smirk daring her to answer, and Amy grins sharply.

“Bring it on.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can't really think of much to say other than what is already in the fic. References to different episodes (who can spot them all?) and some made up adventures to round things up, but nothing that merits any notes, me thinks.
> 
> Next time: Churchill's call is _not_ what Koschei expected, and someone will pay for it. _In blood._


End file.
